Lady Fortescue Steps Out

by M C Beaton

  He let himself in by a terrace window which he had already noticed had a lock that was easy to pick. He had memorized the geography of the house and so was able to move quietly in the dark.

  With a special little pick, he unlocked the case, lifted the necklace out and put it in his pocket and carefully arranged the substitute, glad that bright moonlight was shining into the room and he did not have to risk lighting a candle.

  The deed was done.

  It was only when he was returning to London that he suddenly realized he had a fortune in his pocket. Why not sell it and keep the money for himself? He could live like a gentleman once more. He deserved a reward. He had never stolen anything so valuable before, never committed such an elaborately plotted crime.

  But somehow, since he knew he was not much liked, the thought of the sheer loneliness of that old life made him go straight back to Bond Street, open the door of the drawing-room, and cry out, “Order the builders. We are going into business!”

  Chapter Three

  Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

  Their homely joys and destiny obscure;

  Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

  The short and simple annals of the poor.

  —THOMAS GRAY

  The fashionable hotels were The Clarendon, Limmer’s, Ibbetson’s, Fladong’s, Stephen’s and Grillon’s. The Clarendon was kept by a French cook, Jacquiers, and was the only public hotel that served a genuine French dinner, for which you seldom paid less than three or four pounds, with a bottle of claret or champagne costing a guinea.

  Limmer’s was in Bond Street and an evening resort for the sporting world. As the famous Regency diarist Captain Gronow put it, “… in fact it was a midnight Tattersall’s, where you heard nothing but the language of the turf, and where men with not very clean hands used to make up their books.” Limmer’s was rated as the dirtiest hotel in London, but in its gloomy, comfortless coffee room might be seen many members of the rich squirearchy who visited London during the sporting season. This hotel was so crowded that quite often a bed could not be obtained for any amount of money, but they served a good, plain English dinner and their gin punch, named after their waiter, Tom Collins, was famous.

  Ibbetson’s Hotel was chiefly patronized by the clergy and by young men from the universities. The charges there were not very high. Fladong’s in Oxford Street was the haunt of naval men, for there was no club for sailors. Stephen’s, like Limmer’s, was also in Bond Street, and used by army officers and men about town. If any stranger without the right social credentials asked to dine there, he was stared at by the servants and assured that there was no table available. The menu was simple: boiled fish and joints of meat.

  These then formed the competition for the new hotel taking shape inside the discreet frontage of Lady Fortescue’s home. Despite the fact that the poor relations had to make their quarters in the attics, there were hardly ever any outbursts of temper. Miss Tonks, terrified at first by the enormity of the risk they were taking and by her future as a hotel servant, had gradually blossomed in the odd company in which she found herself and had recently roused herself to call Sir Philip a “malevolent old pig,” to cheers from everyone but Sir Philip, who looked as surprised as if a pet lap-dog had savaged him. Not that Sir Philip and his horrible china teeth, which he had a nasty habit of leaving about the place, was often with them.

  The old man had apparently forgotten that the main reason for the hotel was to rouse their relatives to buy them out. He seemed consumed with ambition to make the hotel the best in London and even overrode Lady Fortescue’s objections that too much gold paint was being used in the hall.

  “Dazzle ‘em on entrance,” said Sir Philip. “Mirrors and gilt and thick carpet. Put a thin red one over a lot of felt. Demme, I would give my back teeth for a chandelier.”

  “You already have given your back teeth,” said Lady Fortescue waspishly, but Sir Philip was off and preparing for another raiding visit on his relatives.

  This time he chose his nephew, Mr. Tommy Brickhampton, although with a certain reluctance. He was fond of Tommy, even though he knew that Mrs. Tommy dreaded his visits.

  True to form, he turned up unannounced just as the fashionable Mrs. Tommy was giving a house party. Sir Philip had behaved badly in the past, but this time even his nephew considered that Sir Philip was going out of his way to be particularly obnoxious. His table manners were worse than ever and he appeared to delight in insulting the guests, especially the ladies.

  Driven by his anguished wife, after the fourth day of this social hell, Tommy took his uncle aside and said he would really have to go.

  To his alarm, Sir Philip began to cry, or that is what it looked like, Sir Philip having scrubbed his eyes with a raw onion hidden in his handkerchief.

  “I am so sorry,” said Sir Philip, giving all the appearance of a pathetically broken old man. “I lead such a dull and lonely life. I am not used to company. Before I take myself off, could I ask you for a little present?”

  “Anything,” said Tommy awkwardly, beginning to privately damn his poor wife as a heartless fiend.

  “You know how I poke around the place?” said Sir Philip.

  “Oh, yes,” said Tommy with feeling.

  “In that saloon in the west wing, the one you never use …”

  “We will be using it,” said Tommy quickly. “Getting the builders in. Wall’s a bit shaky.”

  “There is a chandelier there I would love. With something glittering and beautiful like that to light my old age, I would die happy.”

  “But that’s Waterford crystal!”

  “Oh, well, I feared it was too much to ask. When’s dinner?”

  “Look, Unk,” said Tommy, “I don’t want to appear heart lessor crude, but I’ll strike a bargain with you. I’ll give you that chandelier if you promise not to visit us for a year.”

  Sir Philip debated whether he ought to cry again, but the onion had made his eyes sore, and so he said, “Very well, my boy. And if I could have your travelling carriage to take it back to London …?”

  “Yes, yes, but if you could leave quickly. I mean to say, no reason for long-drawn-out leave-takings, hey?”

  And so Sir Philip and the enormous chandelier wrapped in a Holland cloth were loaded into the travelling carriage while Mrs. Tommy stood and watched balefully, clasping and unclasping her little hands and muttering to her husband, “How could you? That was a wedding present from Lord Frame!”

  Even Lady Fortescue had to admit that, once it was hung in the hall, the chandelier looked magnificent.

  The old schoolroom up among the attics was their dining-room and drawing-room combined. They were relaxing after one of Harriet’s excellent dinners when Mrs. Budley put down a piece of sewing she had been working on and said, “What is the hotel to be called?”

  “The Palace,” suggested the colonel.

  “Too vulgar by half,” said Lady Fortescue. “We should call it Fortescue’s Hotel.”

  “What about an acronym, using our names?” said Miss Tonks.

  Harriet wrote it down. “That comes to JTBFSS; can’t get a word out of that.”

  “I have it,” said Sir Philip. “The Poor Relation.”

  “What!”

  “Think on’t. That’ll get the relatives coming in droves. And look at it this way. It suggests cachet, economy, and the sort of name that only anyone very aristocratic would dare to call a place. All those other hotels are really just extensions of men’s clubs. But what about a hotel where the ladies could stay for the Season, families could stay? We could charge the earth and they would pay, because it would spare them the price of a rented town house, the price of servants, and the price of food.”

  “It’s outrageous. But you might have something there,” said the colonel slowly. He looked down at his sparkling-new Hessian boots for comfort. It had been Harriet who had suggested they each buy something they wanted very much before the builders started work. She herself
had bought a delicate little fan, a useless trifle to remind her of elegant carefree days, long gone. Lady Fortescue had bought a gilt fob-watch, the one that she had given to the pawn having been sold by the pawnbroker long ago. Miss Tonks had bought a lace collar; Mrs. Budley a bonnet, and Sir Philip a large bottle of scent.

  “I think I like it,” said Miss Tonks.

  “Oh, now that the spinster has given it her blessing,” jeered Sir Philip, “we have nothing to worry about.”

  “I think you are the most unlovable creature I have ever come across,” said Miss Tonks hotly.

  Harriet looked across at her in affectionate amusement. No longer the thin, dithering, faded woman she had been, Miss Tonks was gaining colour and character.

  “Don’t let’s quarrel,” pleaded Mrs. Budley. “I can’t bear it.”

  Mrs. Budley had just surprised them all by selling all her pretty clothes and keeping only the plain serviceable ones.

  “Now, then, m’dear,” said the colonel gallantly. “No one wants to upset you.”

  “No, indeed,” agreed Lady Fortescue, but she was suddenly seized with an uncharacteristic fit of jealousy at the sight of the colonel smiling on the widow.

  “That’s it, then,” said Sir Philip. “The Poor Relation it is!”

  * * *

  By the following January, the sign was hoisted high over the building. Advertisements in the newspapers described the new venture as “a discreet hotel for families attending the London Season.”

  Little crowds gathered outside, peering in at the dazzling hall and that glittering chandelier. In country houses the length and breadth of England, the new hotel was discussed.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mr. Tommy. “There’s a big piece in the Morning Post about this new hotel, The Poor Relation.”

  “What an odd name,” exclaimed his wife.

  “It’s worse than that. It’s being run by six people.”

  “Who are they? Some of those French people, I suppose.”

  “The names of the owners are listed as Lady Fortescue, Colonel Sandhurst, Miss Letitia Tonks, Miss Harriet James, Mrs. Eliza Budley and … Sir Philip Sommerville.”

  “The old wretch,” said his wife bitterly. “He has done this out of spite. Poor relation, indeed!”

  “Can’t have this,” said Tommy miserably. “Think of the shame on the family. Better go and see if we can buy him out.”

  A steely look appeared in his wife’s beautiful eyes. “On the contrary,” she said evenly, “it gives us a good excuse to have nothing to do with the old horror again.”

  Honoria, Mrs. Blessop, stared at the newspaper as if she could not believe her eyes. But the Letitia Tonks mentioned could not be her sister. Letitia had very little money and certainly not enough to be a partner in a hotel. Still, it would perhaps be wise to call when she was in London for the Season. And if it should prove to be her sister, she would drag her out of there by the hair.

  The Duke of Rowcester read the article several times. He did not care what Sir Philip did. The man was nothing to him. But Lady Fortescue. She must be really mad. And that other name, Harriet James. But it could not be his Harriet, not that startling beauty who had intrigued him so long ago. But it was his duty to protect his family name and stop Lady Fortescue in this obviously senile folly.

  In a great dreary pile on the Yorkshire moors, Lady Bunbary, proud mother of two plain daughters, read the article very carefully. She had already rented a house for the Season at a great price. This hotel had very high charges. On the other hand, it would save the expense of moving the servants to London, not to mention the expense of that town house. She put the matter to her husband, who as usual said, “You must do as you feel fit, my dear.” And so she sat down at her writing desk and cancelled the hire of the town house and then wrote another letter to The Poor Relation booking rooms for herself, her husband, her two daughters, her maid and her husband’s valet for the Season. And so The Poor Relation got its first customers.

  More bookings followed, and by the first day of the Season, the hotel was full. Not only was the hotel full, but society fought to try to get bookings for dinner in the dining-room, for the food was reported to be superb, and then there was the novelty of being served at dinner by old Lady Fortescue and Colonel Sandhurst.

  In competition with Limmer’s famous Tom Collins, named after the clever waiter who had invented it, Sir Philip had come up with the Sommerville Blast, a mixture of rum, arrack, gin, honey, herbs and soda water.

  Harriet had engaged other servants, but Sir Philip made sure that the six of them were always in view, doing menial jobs. That was what added to the cachet, and as the hotel prospered so, the poor relations found that a great deal of the work was being done for them by an increasing army of servants … with the exception of Harriet.

  She worked wonders in the kitchen to keep the cooking budget low, knowing that they must show a large profit by the end of the Season. But she was proud of the hotel and her part in the running of it. She only wished Sir Philip would stop his tricks, would stop cheating the guests.

  Lady Bunbary sat down on a pretty gilt chair in her room the day she arrived and it broke under her. Sir Philip tut-tutted and added the price of a new chair to her bill without a conscience, although he had sawn through most of the legs so that just such an accident would happen. He gleefully took away the remains of the chair, glued it together and put it in someone else’s room to await another profitable accident. He broke handles off water jugs and glued them on lightly so that when they, too, broke, the guest could be charged for the damage, and so a small army of cunningly broken objects found their way from bedchamber to bedchamber.

  Harriet slaved away over her cooking pots, only occasionally mounting the area steps to take the air and look wistfully at the young misses leaving the hotel for some social engagement, chattering and carefree, sending clouds of scent down Bond Street.

  She wondered sometimes if her life had really changed for the better or whether she had not sentenced herself to perpetual drudgery.

  One evening when she was enjoying a brief rest at the top of the area steps, a splendid carriage pulled by four white horses rolled to a stop in front of The Poor Relation. The coach panels were crested and there was a magnificent coachman on the box as well as outriders. Two footmen jumped down from the back-strap and lifted down the steps. Strange, it was rather like that magnificent coach which had brought back Sir Philip from his first raiding expedition, although the old man had steadfastly refused to say where he had been.

  A tall man alighted from the coach and stood looking up at the front of the hotel. Harriet shrank back. It was the Duke of Rowcester. He looked grimmer and more austere than she remembered.

  She darted down the area steps and shot up to the little office off the hall, where she found Lady Fortescue, Sir Philip, and Colonel Sandhurst gleefully pouring over the books.

  “The Duke of Rowcester has arrived,” gasped Harriet.

  “Dear me,” said Lady Fortescue. “Now the trouble begins.”

  “I would be glad, so very glad,” said Harriet in a rush, “if you did not tell him about me. I mean, my name has been in the newspapers, but you could say that Harriet James is a sleeping partner and … and … quite an old lady. I knew him once and I would not like him to know I was working as a cook.”

  Lady Fortescue squared her shoulders. “Have no fear. He will be so angry with me, he will not be interested in anyone else. Why are you looking so shifty, Sir Philip? It is not as if he is your relative. Your arm, Colonel. Let us face the enemy together.”

  Lady Fortescue leaned quite heavily on the colonel’s arm so that he forgot he had often damned her as an unfeminine bossy old trout and felt a wave of protectiveness as they walked together into the hall and faced the Duke of Rowcester.

  “Madam,” said the duke coldly, removing his hat to reveal a head of thick golden hair, “is there somewhere we may be private?”

  Lady Fortescue inclined her head. �
�But Colonel Sandhurst comes with me,” she said. “There is nothing that need be kept private from him.”

  He bowed in assent and she led the way back to the office. Sir Philip looked up as they entered and blushed, for, perhaps, the first time in his life. “Well, well,” said the duke nastily, “another relative. Dear me, Colonel Sandhurst, you are not perhaps related to me as well?”

  Lady Fortescue’s hand trembled slightly on the colonel’s arm. “We were not aware Sir Philip was related to you.”

  “Nor was I,” said the duke, “until he descended on me last year.”

  Lady Fortescue and the colonel exchanged startled glances as it dawned on them both at the same time that the Duke of Rowcester was probably that mysterious relative from whom Sir Philip had stolen something of tremendously high value. Shades of the prison house passed before Lady Fortescue’s eyes and she said weakly, “I must sit down.”

  “Leave you all to it,” said Sir Philip cheerfully, cheerful because the duke had obviously not noticed that necklace was a fake, and he scurried off.

  Lady Fortescue sat down behind a small ornate desk, the colonel stood behind her with one hand on her shoulder, and the duke faced them both.

  “You have shamed our family,” said the duke.

  “On the contrary,” said Lady Fortescue, suddenly rallying, “I have brought credit to the family by being part of a successful business.”

  “By going into trade?”

  “I am quite decided there is nothing dishonourable in trade,” said Lady Fortescue firmly.

  “I will not refer in front of this gentleman to your unfortunate behaviour on your last visit to me,” said the duke icily, “but that combined with this persuades me that I have sufficient grounds to have you committed to the nearest madhouse.”